Page 74 of All Yours

“Oh my gosh.” I had the bag of burgers and fries in my hand. “I am so sorry,” I said, almost laughing. “Come on in.”

He closed the door behind him while I took the bag to the table and divvied up the food. We ate in silence for a while.

“Forgive me for asking,” Jeremy said, balling up the hamburger wrapper. “But why are you upset for Jonah doing what you asked and not being here?”

I sighed and tossed the empty fry container back into the bag. “I didn’t think he’d leave. Usually when he insists on talking about something, he doesn’t stop until we do.”

“This is why I’m single,” he muttered.

“They took me out of here in handcuffs, Jeremy. How should I have reacted when he showed up?”

“You’re right,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “It was a mistake for him to come to the police station. But from what I saw, he was just trying to be supportive.”

“You’re his cousin, of course you’re going to say that.”

“True. I’m eighteen months older, and we spent summers together. I know him pretty well, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sure.” I stuffed my dinner trash into the bag.

“You say you coerced him into a fake relationship for your PR strategy? The Jonah I know couldn’t be coerced into anything. He doesn’t play any angles like some people.”

“He’s a great guy,” I said, putting my head in my hands. “Always there… dependable… but he did it because I asked him to. I used our friendship, forced things along, and got carried away.”

Jeremy shook his head. “He did it because he wanted to. I saw the way he looked at you when you told him to go away. That wasn’t fake.”

“No.”

“You wounded him.”

“No.” The ache in my chest intensified. “It’s all gotten out of hand.”

He gathered his dinner trash up and shoved it back into the bag. “Yes. And when he wasn’t here, that was heart breaking for you.”

The lump in my throat hardened to the point I couldn’t speak. I wouldn’t cry in front of this man.

“It’s not my place, and I don’t get the whole PR stunt thing. But it feels like things got real between the two of you. And only you two can work out what that means from now on. Can I offer you one piece of advice?”

“Sure,” I croaked out through my closed off esophagus.

“If you want him, just be honest and tell him.”

“What if I read this all wrong, and he only took it as a fake relationship?”

Jeremy leveled me with a ‘get real’ expression. He contemplated me for a long moment.

“If you’re not willing to be completely honest with him, then let him go. He deserves that.”

Chapter Twenty- Five

Sloane

Despite not knowing if I’d go to jail or just get a fine, I set out to make lemonade out of the current basket of lemons in life. I blocked out everything and everyone else. For the first time in years, I hadn’t spoken to Jonah in days. But I didn’t want him to feel obligated or be with me because he felt sorry for me. Jonah had never made the first move. I dragged him into my bed, and I invited him to stay the night. And it was wrong of me to lean on him so much. It was time for me to fix my life by myself.

My solution was to throw myself into my writing. It was what saved me after tennis, and it would save me now. I tapped away on the keyboard. Once again, words poured from my hands. Character after character, paragraph after paragraph, scene after scene all came together as if by magic. It had been months since the story flowed so effortlessly.

I discovered I’d stayed up all night when beams of sun filtered in through the blinds in the kitchen window. The story of a woman had formed. She’d been a teenage tennis phenom, and had fallen from grace, hard. My character had hidden away from the world and yet somehow still found love with a small-town handyman. In my novel, the couple was in the middle of their dark night before their happily ever after. It was a given that they’d ride off into the sunset together. But real life rarely worked that way.

My cell phone buzzed on the table; Jeremy Cohen’s name appeared on the screen.

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